You should consider unplugging that new plasma TV, at least when you are not watching it. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a plasma TV sucks down $165 of electricity a year in standby mode.

“Stop Your Electronics’ Vampire Power Waste,” an article by JR Raphael at PC World, goes on to list other top culprits in your home. A desktop PC is near the top of the list at $6.20 wasted while in standby. This number hides a bigger problem - many desktop PCs are ‘on’ 247. Frustrated with slow boot times, people simply never turn off their computers. It is one of the problems we are addressing with Splashtop. And a big problem it is. Lets do a quick calculation.

A well designed desktop that is ‘off’ or in standby consumes less than 1 Watt of energy. An idling ‘on’ desktop can easily consume 50 Watts of energy. Which means that it will contribute some $300 to your annual electricity bill.

If your desktop has a Splashtop-powered motherboard, like one of many excellent motherboards from ASUS (who calls the feature “Express Gate”), you can turn it on or off nearly instantly. You no longer need to keep your PC running all the time. The annual savings should be enough for you to buy a sweet new Lenovo S10 netbook with Splashtop - or whatever is the hottest gizmo a year from now.

Earth Day is just around the corner (April 22nd) and we here at DeviceVM don’t want to be left out of the festivities. We all know that Splashtop is fast and allows you to browse the web seconds after you hit the power button. We also know that Splashtop is secure as it doesn’t fall victim to the wide variety of viruses as that other big Operating System. But, did you know that Splashtop is amazingly Eco-Friendly?

We talk a lot about “instant-on.” The ability to go from a cold-boot to a fully functional web browser is killer technology. But, sometimes we forget to highlight instant on’s less sexy parter, “instant-off.” Consumers leave their computers on 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Hundreds of millions of people do this because it takes a long time to turn off and we all know that it takes forever to turn back on. We want to challenge you to turn your computer off when you’re done with it this Earth Day (and every day after) so we’ve teamed up with our friends at Carbon Rally to do so.

Did you know that by turning off your PC each night, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by a total of 51lbs for the month. That’s 51lbs of CO2! That’s why we’re teaming up with Carbon Rally to promote the “Give Your Computer a Rest for Earth Day” Challenge. You may not have a Splashtop-enabled computer (yet) that makes turning on and off your computer easier. But, by taking this challenge you can do the right thing for the environment and even reduce your personal electric bill by $200.

Sign up for the challenge at Carbon Rally and make a difference this Earth Day!